Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  Wife. Elizabeth Kazaki flashed onto her mental screen.

  “Help you?” The T-shirt seller stepped close.

  She paid for her purchases and backed away from the vendor’s stall, then walked out of the Darwin Station grounds into the town, and headed down the side street toward Hotel Aurora. As she passed the small window that opened onto the lobby, she got a glimpse of Mrs. Vintner’s distinctive red twist hairstyle behind the check-in desk, along with a black-haired teen. But by the time she had rounded the entryway and stepped through the foyer, only the teen stood there.

  “Señora Vintner is not here,” the girl said in response to Sam’s inquiry. “May I help?”

  “That’s odd. I could have sworn I saw her through the window.”

  The girl blinked and smiled politely.

  “I wanted to talk to her about Dr. Kazaki. He and I stayed here a few days ago.”

  The teen’s face was completely blank. Either she didn’t understand English well or she had no knowledge of the incident or she had an excellent poker face. “Señora Vintner is not available.”

  Sam walked to the side of the reception desk to peer into the office beyond. A small drawered desk, stacked file cabinets, and a copy machine crowded the space. Unless Vintner was hiding under the desk, she’d escaped through the back door. Clearly she was not going to get any information here.

  As she exited the building, a tour bus rumbled by, belching a stream of sooty exhaust. Overhead, a plane passed low, taking off from Baltra airport to the north. If only she were on that jet.

  Dan was dead. The police had her passport. Clearly the American Consulate was not inclined to intervene. Neither Darwin Station nor the Park Service was going to pull any strings for her. It seemed unlikely that anyone in town would provide information, let alone assistance. She was on her own. She had to get that passport back.

  Dusty buildings and scrawny trees surrounded her. On her tourist map of Puerto Ayora was a rectangle labeled Municipio. Municipal? It sounded like it should be town hall, or something close to it.

  After a quick glance over her shoulder to be sure she wasn’t followed, she strolled in the direction the map indicated. After a block, it was clear that she had crossed out of the tourist area. Although the businesses prominently displayed the same brightly colored recycle bins she’d seen closer to Darwin Station, here the bins overflowed with unsorted trash. The streets were littered with orange and banana peels, shreds of plastic bags, soda straws. A line of people spilled out the door and wrapped around the side of a building labeled clínica. She passed small markets with only a few sad vegetables on display, and stores that offered cheap clothing, plastic sandals, and toys.

  Finally she arrived at the Municipio. The yellow-stuccoed building was modest, but still the grandest edifice she’d seen so far in the islands. Three shallow marble steps led up to the entrance, which was flanked by cement pillars unconvincingly painted in faux marble to match the steps. Red geraniums bloomed amid fat-leaved sedums in manicured beds on either side of the walkway. As Sam framed the building’s entrance in her camera’s viewfinder, a man in police uniform walked out. He held up his index finger and wagged his hand back and forth a few times in the international don’t-do-that sign.

  She nodded, lowered her camera. He passed her without comment. Another blond policeman. Schwartz’s brother? Cousin? Galápagos is a small community. Many are related somehow.

  She returned her camera to her day pack and entered the doorway. To her surprise, it opened onto a manicured courtyard. A tired-looking tree in a huge clay pot served as the focal point of the open space. The surrounding walls featured multiple doorways leading off in all directions. Sam was stopped by an older man in dark pants and white guayabera who guarded a desk near the main entry.

  “Señorita?”

  “Police?” she responded.

  He pointed to a doorway above which a huge hand-painted sign proclaimed in black-and-white letters, fiscalia.

  She passed through that portal with some trepidation. Why did walking into a police station make her feel like she was about to be arrested? She’d been fingerprinted once in college at a police station for a summer job with the Federal Aviation Administration. She’d had to pass through barred electric gates into an enclosed area and wait in line with a group of disheveled men. When it was her turn, the technician was abrupt, inking and rolling her fingers across the paper with motions that seemed more forceful than necessary.

  “I’m just getting fingerprinted for a government job,” she’d explained.

  “Yeah, sure,” he’d responded. She’d been more than a little worried that they wouldn’t open the gates on the way out.

  But there were no electric gates in sight here. Just a scarred wooden desk with a woman in a khaki uniform behind it who watched her curiously.

  “You speak English?” Sam asked.

  The woman nodded, her black ponytail bobbing at the back of her neck. “I have some English. What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Summer Westin, and—”

  “Westin?”

  “Yes. You have my passport.”

  “Momento.” The woman abruptly rose and disappeared through a doorway to the left.

  Sam drummed her fingers on the desk, wondering if she should sit down in one of the chairs that lined the walls. After a few more seconds, she took a seat in the corner.

  From her new vantage point, she could see through a doorway into another room. On a stainless steel examination table lay a collection of dive gear. She stood up and walked closer. Shelves, an exam table, and four heavy-duty padlocked locker doors, each big enough to hide one of those rolling drawers that held bodies in morgues on television. There were no corpses in sight. No personnel, either.

  On the table she saw a BCD, an air cylinder, and the top portion of a regulator—the first stage—all still connected with hoses. The section of hose that should have led to the regulator mouthpiece, or second stage, was cut short, and the mouthpiece was missing. A few inches away lay a cracked dive mask. On the strap of the dive mask, the initials DK had been written in indelible marker.

  This was Dan’s gear. The hose attached to the first stage looked as though it had been sliced through, at approximately the same point where she remembered the gash on Dan’s neck. This was definitely not the work of a shark or a sea lion.

  She glanced toward the locker doors. Was Dan’s corpse behind one of them? No labels. Looking back at the table, she noticed that beside the dive mask, inside a plastic zip-lock bag, was a jagged-edge dive knife, identical to the one she carried in the sheath on her BCD. The model was common; Dan carried the same one. Was this Dan’s knife? She checked his BCD. No sheath. Then she remembered that Dan kept his knife strapped onto his calf. She walked around the table, looking for the strap-on sheath. It wasn’t there, unless it was beneath the BCD. Dan’s wetsuit was missing, too; maybe the sheath was still attached.

  Now she noticed something else disturbing. Inside the plastic bag with the knife was one small silver loop. That was her silver earring, the one she lost on the day she’d found Dan’s body.

  “No!” The ponytailed receptionist strode into the room, frowning. “You are not allowed.” In one hand she carried a glass mug half-full of dark steaming liquid. With her free hand, she gestured back to the lobby. Sam dutifully followed her back to the lobby and stood in front of the woman’s desk.

  “That earring back there—” she began, but before she could finish or sit down, the receptionist thrust the mug out. “Café?”

  Sam shook her head, but the woman pressed the mug toward her, causing Sam to grab it with both hands to keep the coffee from spilling down her abdomen. She held the mug uncertainly for a second, then said, “No, thanks. It’s too hot for coffee.”

  The woman blinked at her.

  “At least it’s hot for me,” Sam explained. “I live in the north. Near Canada.”

  “Yes.”

  Sam set the cup on the corn
er of the receptionist’s desk, then placed a hand on the desk’s surface and leaned forward. “Look, Miss . . .”

  “Montero.”

  “Miss Montero, about that earring I saw back there. And there was a knife, too.”

  Montero shrugged. “I know nothing about a knife and earring.”

  I’ll just bet. Sam gritted her teeth and returned to her original question. “A couple of days ago Officer Schwartz took my passport, and I—”

  “Ah,” Montero interrupted, “Sargente Schwartz!” Her shout was loud. Schwartz materialized from a door to the left.

  “Señorita Westin,” he said.

  “Look here, Officer Schwartz,” she started.

  His eyes narrowed. She softened her tone. “You have my passport, remember? I have to leave in a few days, and—”

  He abruptly swiveled toward the Montero woman, spat out a few words, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the adjoining office.

  Well, hell. Sam started after him, but Montero blocked her, holding one hand out. “You cannot pass. Officials only.”

  “But my passport—”

  The woman folded her arms across her chest.

  Maybe another tack. “I need to know what the police are doing about Dr. Kazaki’s death.”

  She was rewarded with a glower. She pressed on. “Has an autopsy been done? How are you investigating his murder?”

  A spark lit Montero’s eyes. “Murder? You believe he is murdered?”

  Careful. She swallowed before answering. “His regulator hose and his face were cut. I don’t think a shark or a sea lion could do that. I’d say he died under suspicious circumstances. Now, can I speak to—”

  Montero interrupted. “Sargente Schwartz says that all will be resolved soon.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Their standoff lasted for another moment, Montero regarding her sternly, Sam glaring back. Finally, Sam decided to leave before she earned herself a personal tour of a Galapagüeno jail cell.

  15

  “This place was originally named Y—you know, the letter—because the highways meet here like in a letter Y.” Marshall seemed determined to give Charlie Perini a lesson about the local history. Chase, dressed in grubby jeans, a denim shirt, and broken-down cowboy boots, listened to the man with one ear as they wandered around a dusty flea market on the outskirts of Why, Arizona. He was having a hard time wrestling his thoughts away from Summer’s phone messages. Call me when you get this. Two days had passed since she’d left all those desperate sounding messages. Would she understand that he couldn’t call her? Would she think that he was rejecting her because she hadn’t accepted his invitation to move in? Was she okay?

  “Then the politicians say that town names need to have at least three letters, so they changed the name to W-H-Y.”

  Marshall concluded his local history lesson by rubbing his nose. The guy did it so often that Chase wondered if Marshall had another habit that involved snorting white powder. If the guy was a dopehead, that could come in useful later. Addicts were always willing to rat out their buddies to get their next fix.

  Randy strolled up in time to add, “Typical, that bureaucrats would make laws about how you can name things. No reason you can’t have a town named with the letter Y.”

  “Yeah,” Chase replied. Charlie Perini was a terse kind of guy. The less an undercover agent talked, the less likely he was to slip up. This was the most dangerous time, when nothing was really going down, when he was “in” but just hanging out with new comrades. This was when agents let things slip about their real lives, about their daily habits and family and friends.

  The folding tables at the flea market were covered with everything from used tools to leather goods to jewelry. The vendors were mostly Hispanics and Native Americans. As he met the dark-eyed gazes of the sellers, Chase kept reminding himself he was not one of these people. He was not half Latino, half Lakota; he was Charlie Perini, Italian-American. Wife named Nikki.

  He looked for Nicole; found her one aisle over and a couple of tables back, pawing through piles of used clothing with Joanne, Randy’s wife. The poor woman was so grateful to finally have another woman to talk to that she was proving to be a goldmine of information. Joanne was a true believer in the nobility of the cause. She had eagerly told Nicole the Citizen Army had branches all across the Southern U.S.A., and they were a prime force in stopping the flow of immigrants and drugs coming across the U.S. border.

  “Dread’s smarter than anyone I ever met,” Nicole had drawled in imitation of Joanne last night, “The way he’s figured how to beat the mules at their own game. We take their drugs so they can’t sell ’em to our kids here.”

  Either Joanne was too dim to figure out that Dread had his own drug-dealing business, or she was trying to convince Nicole of the righteousness of the group’s actions. The men seemed sharper or more suspicious, a lot less willing to talk. Chase felt like he was just along for the ride.

  “I have a question about Why.” He turned toward Marshall and Randy. “Or really, it’s more about what—what the hell are we doing here?”

  He and Nicole had joined Dread, Marshall, Randy, and Joanne yesterday afternoon on a road trip, driving south toward the border and then west into ever yet more forsaken desert country. Last night, they set up camp in the desert, barbecued wieners over a fire, and heated beans over Marshall’s camp stove. They drank, they blasted away at beer cans and cactuses in the desert. The talk had all been bitching about immigrants and the economy and the need to “take the country back.” Once in a long while their new buddies would toss out the name of another member of their group or mention a past event, but he and Nicole needed to lay eyes on more members and witness more activity to build a solid case. They were both getting antsy.

  Breakfast this morning had been lukewarm eggs and hash at a greasy spoon along the highway. And now they were here in Why, which seemed like a damn good name for the place. Chase knew that Nicole itched to call her husband, and Chase was dying to talk to Summer, or at least get somewhere with Internet coverage so he could check the latest posts at Out There. Nicole had called their office this morning, a call forwarded from her supposed friend Maureen’s number in Florida, to let their boss know they were both still alive and working. The GPS unit hidden in the pickup bumper constantly reported the location of their vehicle. But that had been the sum of their communication with the outside world for the last couple of days.

  “Didn’t you guys promise we could make some money out here?” Chase groused to Randy. “I thought we were going to see some action. Where the hell did Dread disappear to?”

  “Chill, man,” Randy told him. “He’s around. Cool your jets and cruise; you never know who’s watching. We’ll know when Dread’s ready.”

  Chase exhaled impatiently and turned his gaze to the next table. Dread seemed to be the leader of this cell of the New American Citizen Army. The connections between cells were so loose they were practically unnoticeable, and the members were all surprisingly tech-savvy. The FBI team that had prepped him and Nicole had really blown this one, giving them older cell phones with no Internet access.

  Instead of meeting in person, NACA passed info back and forth via cell phones and hashtags on Twitter. The hashtag changed every day, and sometimes even several times a day, always some nonsensical combination of words like #redday or #leafnow. At the diner this morning, Dread had shown Chase the chatter on his phone. The hashtag of the moment was #sunshadow and the talk was all about a big ICE bust of a tire manufacturing plant in Texas where 90 percent of the employees were illegals.

  “Now they’ll have to hire real Americans!” Joanne had chortled.

  Chase thought it was more likely that the plant would simply close down Texas operations and move across the border to Mexico, but he kept his mouth shut. “How do you know what tag word to look for?” he’d asked Dread. What’s the command structure of this army? Who’s the general?

  “We got a system,” Dre
ad had answered. “I’ll clue you in later.”

  Nicole and Joanne joined the three men in the flea market’s jewelry section. Randy fingered a heavy silver belt buckle and shot sideways glances at the vendor as if he was considering filching the piece. The wrinkled grandmother fixed her gaze firmly on him. Among her display of ornate Navajo squash blossom necklaces and heavy earrings, Chase spotted a set of silver-framed turquoise squares. The stones were undulating patterns of sea green instead of the usual blue. The rectangular pendant hung from a braided silver chain, and the earrings were simple dangles from silver posts. He could easily picture Summer wearing the set; they were much more her style than the diamonds Steele had given her. It was rare that he ran across anything he thought she would appreciate; she was a hard woman to buy gifts for. But now just wasn’t the time or place.

  Nicole leaned forward and lightly touched the pendant, saying, “Ooh, that’s nice,” before moving on down the aisle. Marshall trailed a few steps behind her, his gaze glued to her backside.

  Nicole had always been able to read Chase. The green turquoise set was not something she would ever have chosen for herself. Today her earrings were pink crystals, her poufy bleached hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a stretchy green T-shirt over tight blue jeans and cowboy boots. Marshall’s gaze was more often on her bustline than on her face. While Nicole would have backhanded the man inside of five minutes, Nikki seemed to enjoy the attention. Charlie needed to warn the guy about ogling his wife.

  The green turquoise set was marked $199. “I’ll give you one-twenty-five,” he told the grandmother. Navajo? Hopi? He couldn’t tell.

  She made a clucking noise. “One-sixty.” Her dark eyes were sad, and he wondered why she was selling these pieces. In the right place, the squash blossom necklaces would be easily worth three times what she was asking. They were probably family heirlooms.

  They settled at one-forty, and Chase dug the bills out of Charlie’s worn leather wallet.